


He's Coming To Us Dead

by Vulgarweed



Series: The Bone Fiddle [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Appalachian AU, Appalachian Folklore, Canon-Typical Violence, Ghosts (maybe), Historical - 1970s, M/M, Paranormal Ambiguity, Past Drug Use, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 14:37:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2776718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war is ending and the troops are returning. They do not always mean well. Their loved ones are not always glad to see them. A case straight out of an old folktale has deep repercussions for Sherlock and John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He's Coming To Us Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Winter_of_our_Discontent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winter_of_our_Discontent/gifts).



> As payback for the wonderful [cover art for the Straw Man Fallacy fanmix](http://vulgarweed.livejournal.com/386790.html)  
> , Winter requested a Bone-Fiddle-verse ghost story!
> 
> The title comes from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc5loYA0Zbw). (Record label entirely coincidental!)
> 
> The story is based on the version of an old legend known as “Murder in the Meadow,” from James Gay Jones’s collection [Appalachian Ghost Stories and Other Tales.](http://www.amazon.com/Appalachian-Ghost-Stories-Other-Tales/dp/0870122037)
> 
> Massive thanks to beta readers snogandagrope and htebazytook!

“Well, I can't say for absolute sure until we get the autopsy, but everything I can see points to cause of death as strangulation,” John said, examining the finger-shaped bruises around the corpse's neck.

“I have to concur,” Sherlock said, nodding, looking disappointed that it was so obvious, but still twitching his nose like a rabbit in barely-contained curiosity. “Even Lestrade would hardly need you or Molly to tell him that.”

Remy Crable, age 27, Caucasian male, currently under arrest for the suspected killing of an unidentified man, lay in his jail cell staring at nothing – and whatever that nothing was, John thought, it must have scared the hell out of him, because that wasn't a face of a man who'd gone peacefully. But then, the cause of it could have told him that much.

Lestrade’s phone call had summoned them to the county jail at the ass-crack of dawn as soon as the body was found - well, John wasn’t the least bit surprised that the sheriff had called Sherlock before even Molly at the morgue. Or that Sherlock had come bounding up the stairs of the big old house still wearing his muddy galoshes from the fields, taking the creaky steps three at a time, and rudely waking John in a state of great excitement. Sherlock had been up for days already working on a forgery case out of Kentucky, and crazy case-time meant that Sherlock wasn’t eating much, he wasn’t gonna sleep much, and he sure wasn’t pulling the blankets off John for the reason John liked best.

This wasn’t just a locked-room mystery, it was a locked- _jail-cell._ Crable had been alone in there, apparently asleep the last time anyone had checked, and not a soul had passed through those jailhouse doors, either in or out, after he'd been taken in. Well, except Lestrade himself and Deputy Donovan, who’d been occupied with the terrified and miserable Varna Vaughn, Crable's girlfriend.

From the whispered briefing Lestrade had given them, trying to be tactful, John and Sherlock knew that Varna was married, but her husband Joe had been MIA in Vietnam since '70. The only other witnesses, a man and his aged mother who lived down on the other side of the field from the Crable house, well, they’d given their side of the story and gone home quickly as the dark night had gathered, shaking and pale. They’d barely been able to tell Lestrade what they'd seen in that meadow, when Crable had taken that fateful shot with his hunting rifle at the man and the dog he'd seen coming up out of the mist.

It was all very garbled and complicated. John could almost hear the high, fast whirring of a high-tech engine as Sherlock's mind worked in multiple layers to weave all the tangled strands of those not-very-coherent accounts together, while at the same time poking and prodding impassively at Remy Crable's mortal remains.

“You've tentatively marked this down as a suicide,” Sherlock said to Lestrade. “Although there's no rope and no scarf. Belt is missing – you confiscated that, of course. Didn't use shoelaces, unless he managed to relace his shoes _after_ he was dead; I hate to jump to conclusions but I think we can probably rule that out. Bruise patterns correspond to a pair of hands, almost certainly male.”

“He strangled himself,” Lestrade said. “He must've. With his hands.”

“Mmm . . . no. Not actually possible,” Sherlock said. “Aside from the extraordinary willpower it would take, he would lose consciousness prior to death and thus relieve the pressure. He could damage himself enough to take brain damage, _maybe,_ but to die? Unlikely. The body has strong survival mechanisms. Also, his hands aren't positioned correctly to have fallen from around his own neck. Look here -” he held up one of the dead man's hands. “Broken nails. Tiny lacerations. He fought to _save_ himself, not to kill himself.”

John could almost see the shiver that ran down Lestrade's spine, or maybe he was just imagining things, because it mirrored his own. “Alright,” Lestrade said. “But against who?”

“That's why you called me in,” Sherlock said, eyes gleaming. “Now, you didn't let _anyone_ in?”

“Hell no. Poor Varna was settin' out on the stoop cryin' most of the night, and I wouldn't even let her in either. Sally took her out some food and a little drink to calm her down. Don't think it helped much. Sally drove her home, and then she showed up back here again just about an hour ago.” Lestrade nodded a glance at the waiting room out front, through the little window. A pretty but haggard-looking young woman with dark olive skin and curly hair and puffy, bloodshot eyes sat there holding onto a Bible in one hand and a wad of soggy Kleenex in the other, universal talismans of mourning in these parts.

“I’ll need to speak to her, of course,” Sherlock said.

“Now just a minute there, Sherlock,” Sally said fiercely, stepping in between him and Varna. “You're gonna shut your mouth and listen to me for once, because I know part of the story you don't.”

Sherlock opened his mouth for a cutting rejoinder – and then snapped it shut again, furrowed his brow, and turned his head. He nodded. “Tell me.” A long, dreadful pause. “Please.”

She smiled, and then her face hardened again. “See, I know Varna. She's younger than me but we went to school together for a while. She's one of those Melungeons, from down by the Virginia line. We went to the colored school.” She said this last with a little sneer. “You don't know nothin' about that.

“So she and Joe Vaughn were friends 'cause their daddies worked in the mines together, but that's all they were as far as I know. Just friends. So everyone was a little bit surprised when she married him. Some say he paid her to do it, hoping it would help get him out of the draft. Or she just did it for that reason because she liked him, who knows. Well, it didn't work. They sent him down anyway. So he was gone, and then the letters stopped coming, and then Remy moved in on her and she moved right up to meet him, because that was who she'd always wanted to be with anyway. For all they knew, Joe was probably dead, right?

“There were folks who didn't like it when Remy moved in, and they said so. Used to shivaree 'em all the time, put a rock through their window, tried to run his car off the road. Remy's white trash, but at least he's white, right? People didn't like her cheating and shackin' up, and they didn't like a white man with a girl like her. I'm surprised it took this long for someone to take a shot at 'em. You know how people get, don't you? People who judge others?”

Sherlock gave a terse little nod. “Well, here's the thing,” Sally went on. “That girl is terrified, and she swore up and down on a Bible and her mama's grave and her own soul that the man she saw lying there, the man Remy shot, was Joe. And that dog standin' over 'im was the dog Joe used to have when he was a boy, just ten times bigger. The same dog that got run over by a coal truck when Joe was thirteen.”

“Eyewitness reports are notoriously unreliable,” Sherlock said out of reflex, but John could tell he wasn't wholly dismissing everything. There was a tilt of interest in his head, a gleam of curiosity in his eyes. “And Joe's true whereabouts?” Sherlock asked. “Has anyone bothered to look into that?”

“Dead,” Sally said. “He was killed in Vietnam probably about two years ago. They just identified what was left of him now. By his teeth. His mama got a letter, got taken to the hospital with a stroke three days ago. She hasn't talked to anyone since, so Varna couldn't have known. The Army wouldn't've known where to find her ‘cause she’s been hiding out.”

Sherlock nodded. “Well, that’s a pity, because obviously the man Crable shot wasn’t him. But if Crable sincerely believed it was . . . well, I suppose his motive is irrelevant under the circumstances. The other witness - where is he? Who is he?”

“Ricky Early, Crable’s neighbor. He ain’t the one who called us, though, that’s his mother who could see a man get shot from her house, but couldn’t see the one who done it. She panicked, thought it was Ricky at first. She was out burning brush in the yard and had all that smoke in her eyes, and the fog was comin’ in.”

“Fine, I’ll want to talk to them as well,” said Sherlock, starting to get visibly impatient.

“I think Lestrade wants you two to ride out with him to the scene. Talk to Varna first, if you don’t mind, ‘cause I want to get her home and back to bed. And Sherlock -” Sally said, leaning in close, “I don’t want to hear a damn word out of _you_ about livin' in sin, you understand?”

It was John who flinched, with Sally’s back to him so she couldn’t see. Sherlock didn’t seem to react at all, beyond saying curtly, “Of all of my flaws that you regularly point out, Sally, religious piety has never been one of them.”

“Cruelty is,” she said steadily. “Varna's a widow twice over and she's scared to death. Go softly. If you can.”

***

“All right sir,” Varna said, drawing herself up as straight as she could despite her shivers. Sherlock wasn’t being gentle, exactly, but he was far from his worst. “Best as I can recall. I was standin’ in my kitchen - the window there looks out on the edge of the ridge up yonder, out past my garden there’s a little field. There’s a big ol’ dead tree right on the edge, and an old barbed wire fence, and that’s all you can see right up against the sky. And it was late afternoon, and I heard Remy come in from work in the front door, and right about that time, it was startin’ to get foggy. I thought it was just the smoke from where the Earlys over next door was clearin’ out some brush, but then it got thicker and wetter, and right before it got too thick, I saw a man standin’ there, right on the edge of the hill, and he had a great big dog with him, and he started walkin’ towards the house.

“Well, I couldn’t see his face, but I didn’t like the look of him none, he didn’t look friendly, and I told Remy to come around and have a look. My eyes ain’t so good, you know. I used to get glasses from the union clinic down in Welch ‘cause my daddy was a miner but then he died and the clinic closed up, I ain’t had new glasses since I was married, and . . . “

“Yes, yes,” Sherlock broke in. “You’re both tedious _and_ nearsighted, I understand, go on.”

She frowned at him and scrabbled her fingernails on the Bible cover, and then went on. “So Remy comes around at the window and has a look, and he kind of cusses under his breath and says, ‘you get out of the window, honey, that man’s got a gun.’ I ask him who is it, but he doesn’t say nothin’, he just grabs his shotgun and turns off all the lights in the house and starts walkin’ out the door. I’m tryin’ to stop him, but he won’t listen, so when he goes out I’m watchin’ through just a little crack in the door. Then I think maybe it’s dark out enough now I can follow him. So I grab my own gun - it’s just a deer rifle my daddy gave me when he taught me how to hunt, but -

“But your eyesight is deficient,” Sherlock reminded her.

“I can shoot well enough to scare a man off if he ain’t crazy,” Varna snapped.

“Or kill him by accident, just as likely. Go on.”

“That ain’t what happened, sir!”

“I know it’s not,” Sherlock said, nodding curtly, but not completely unkindly. “Go on.”

“So this man is coming closer and closer, and as he comes on that dog is getting bigger and bigger - it’s as big as a bear, I swear, and it’s growling. And even I can see Remy’s right, he’s got a gun, and he’s aiming it at Remy in the fog but Remy’s got his gun up too and he shoots first, and the man falls down, right about at the bottom of the hill where the little creek’s at. By then he’s close enough to me that even I can see his face, and oh God, Mr. Holmes, God help us, it was my husband Joe. I know it was. I know that face. Remy knew it too.” She burst into tears. “I know I wasn’t a good wife. I know I wasn’t faithful. I shoulda waited. I shouldn’t've married a man I didn’t really love that way. I liked him, though. He was a good man! I didn’t want him dead. I know Remy didn’t either, but Joe was gonna shoot him, I could see it, it was self-defense, it was!”

John watched Sherlock's face, waiting for him to say something callous and cold. But instead Sherlock leaned forward intently, studying Varna. “Did the other man's gun fire, Varna? Try to remember.”

“I think it did,” she said, nodding. “He must have missed. And then Remy went running to go see to him, and that dog got in front of him, standin' over the body and howling and barin' its teeth with its hair all standin' up. That's when Ricky and his mama come running. It was his mama called the Sheriff, I know. I don't mind that, I might have done the same if I couldn't see who was shootin' at who.”

“That's what happened, pretty much,” said Lestrade to Sherlock, offering Varna a cup of coffee. “By the time we got there, that dog was still standing over the body and wouldn't let anybody get near it. Ricky Early tried to lead it off, get it to chase him instead, but it wouldn't go. We didn't want to just shoot it. Figured we'd wait and come back for the body later after we'd got Remy off to jail. Had an eyewitness there that he'd shot a man, so we had to. We're on our way out there now. Figured you and John would want to come, don't you?”

“Of course,” Sherlock said, already on his feet.

Varna looked down at the ground, dismissed. “Can I – can I go in there and see him?” she asked, nodding at the row of jail cells.

“Not sure that's a good idea . . . Mrs. Vaughn,” Lestrade said gently, then winced as he realized that might not have been the kindest thing to call her.

“I seen bodies before the funeral home before, Sheriff,” she said. “And I know the wages of sin is death. Pray for us.”

John waited for Sherlock's inevitable haughty barb, but was surprised when Sherlock laid a hand on Varna's arm and said, “You'll be in our thoughts.” Entirely truthfully.

***

“So,” John said to Sherlock as the hearse followed the red lights of Lestrade's patrol car up a narrow, twisting blacktop to Dewer’s Holler. “A dead man comes back from Vietnam to kill the guy who moved in on his wife, is that the story?” He laughed a little. “That one's as old as the hills. Reckon it was the Civil War the first time it got told. Guess it's a lot more believable a ghost could come back from Antietam, though. Vietnam's so _far.”_

“Quiet, John,” Sherlock snapped, eyes fixed on the road. The brake lights of the car up ahead glowed a little around the edges in the rising morning fog, now lightening to a steady solid gray.

Hurt, John snapped his mouth shut and stared out the window, taking in every detail he could as the fog blew softly back and forth, sometimes thicker, sometimes thin enough to show objects as more than looming shadows. The Vaughn household was typical of this side of the county – an old woodframe house that the old folks had lived in, now near collapse, sitting on the hill high above a newfangled modular house just moved in recently, only not a trailer because it had never had wheels. But although this little house was already looking worn and the curtains were faded, but it was clean, although the yard was overgrown. A red 60s pickup truck sat in the driveway, still full of a load of firewood.

The fog was thinning off and on as Sherlock and John trudged down the gravel path behind Lestrade and Ricky Early until the driveway ended at the little trickling creek – on the other side, the cleared pasture land started to rise steeply. Conditions still didn't show much, but all their eyes were scanning the field for the same thing: a dead man and a dog standing guard.

They all stood still as stone for as long as they could. No sound but the shouting of crows, and the dripping of water in the trees and the creaking of Lestrade's brown leather jacket as he tried to look busy.

There didn’t seem to be anything like a dog at all, and no body visible where the Earlys had said it ought to be. With a little trepidation, John followed Sherlock across the creek and up the hill. His hand tightened on his pistol in his pocket, scanning the surroundings with practiced patroller's eyes. Something about this whole setup felt wrong, in an uncanny, dangerous way. Sherlock's impatient snorting didn't help. “You're _sure_ this is the place?” he snapped at the hapless Ricky.

“Damn sure,” Ricky said. He pointed to a dip in the hill. “That's my house right over thar. I could see him from my porch.”

“You and your mother were outside, burning brush,” Sherlock said.

“Told ya so twice already.”

“And the brush wasn't too damp to catch? It rained yesterday and the fog has been constant ever since.”

“Well, I put a little kerosene on it,” Ricky admitted.

Sherlock nodded and turned away, clearly filing something upstairs for future reference. “This is the spot where he fell, yes?”

“Coulda sworn it,” Ricky said, spitting a little tobacco juice away from the spot, to Sherlock's apparent disgust. John could have told Ricky about Sherlock’s reverent attitude to crime scenes. You wouldn’t spit it on a man’s grave, would you? Regardless, Sherlock went down on his hands and knees, prodding between tufts of tall grass, peering and sniffing.

“Hm,” he grunted. He sat up on his knees, pulled a little at his hair, and went back down to investigate further.

Eventually, he sat up again, and fixed Ricky with an accusing stare. “There's a spot of blood here. Far too small to come from a fatal shotgun wound. Aside from that, there is no suggestion whatsoever that a body ever lay here. No impressions in the grass. No footprints. No _paw_ prints, there's no evidence of a dog either. There's no path where a body could have been dragged away, and no footprints of anyone who might have carried it.” Nevertheless, Sherlock scraped up a sample of bloody ground, dabbing it carefully into the sort of tiny little plastic bag dope dealers used.

Ricky could have been angry at being indirectly called a liar – and John was sure Sherlock was about to do it directly – but that wasn't his reaction at all. The man looked terrified, going pale and staring at the spot fixedly, as if some evidence of a material death would appear if he just stared and prayed long enough. “I swear I'm tellin' the truth. I swear it on the Bible. I know what I saw.”

“Really? Because it doesn't seem like you do.”

“I got no reason to lie, sir. Remy and Varna are my friends. I didn't want to see 'em in trouble. Why the hell would I make up a shootin' that didn't happen?”

“Why indeed?” Sherlock snapped and stalked off.

“We're gonna search these woods right here, okay?” Lestrade called out. “You wanna come down here, Sherlock?”

“Why? There won't be anything to find.”

“But that don't make any sense,” Lestrade yelled at Sherlock's back. “You think he wasn't dead, maybe? Got up and walked away?”

 _“Wet grass. Mud. But no footprints,”_ Sherlock growled over his shoulder, and not a word more was to be had out of him. He strode up the hill and away from the site that all the witnesses swore was where the shot man fell; instead he busied himself crawling about on the muddy ground with his magnifying glass and plastic bags, gathering samples apparently at random, veering off into the Earlys' yard and poking at the ash from the fire, taking pictures of the house and the meadow from various points with his little camera, and in general muttering to himself and refusing to communicate at all with anyone else.

The only thing John heard him to say and could make sense of was, “there's no trace of a dog. No prints, no spoor, no hair. No dog, huge or otherwise.”

John wondered if Sherlock was going to just keep wandering around up the hill and leave him to take a ride in Lestrade's patrol car. It'd been a while since that last happened, but he didn't kid himself it'd never happen again.

But then Sherlock emerged from a thicket of young locust trees down in the creek bottom, and beckoned to John without a word. John hoped that everyone around them wouldn't jump to the conclusion that he was just Sherlock's faithful hunting dog. Even if it was true. _Especially_ if it was true.

Sherlock said not a word as he drove, and his manner was so stiff and forbidding that John didn't even try to put a hand on Sherlock's leg, as was his habit when there was no one around to see. John just lit a cigarette from the hearse's lighter, rolled the window down a little to let the smoke out and the cool damp air in. He passed it to Sherlock to share a drag. Sherlock didn't pass it back, and after a few moments of waiting for Sherlock's manners to kick in (almost always a waste of time), John gave up and lit another one to keep for himself.

Four people had told the Sheriff they'd seen or done the same damn thing. One of them was dead now, and the others stuck to their stories with oaths no mountain folk would swear lightly. If only there was a body (the interloper's, that is), there'd be something to work with. John knew he couldn't do much without one.

The fact that _Sherlock_ was brooding and confuddled; that was what took it into the Twilight Zone. Mere lack of a body didn't seem like it should throw him off so far, to the point where he didn't even want to talk to John or look at him.

***

The heavy fog still hung low over the ridge, and the gloom of it was starting to infect John's mood, particularly considering the mood Sherlock was in. Usual wishy-washy spring weather, damp and chilly as if summer wasn’t even close to ready yet. The fog distorted sounds and stilled scents and narrowed the world down to a tiny, drab field of dim, blurry vision.

Of course everyone living in these hills was used to it, but it still lent an extra air of shadow to the murky problem. Remy Crable's dead horrified face, Varna's grief and guilt and terror, Ricky's certainty that he'd seen the impossible.

John washed up the dishes from the last of the late lunch that Sherlock hadn't touched, and peered out the side kitchen window where the yard tapered away towards Arthur's pasture. It was too early to be growing darker, but it sure looked like that’s just what the sky was doing. The hulks and beams and heaps of Sherlock's junk collection looked ominous in the fog, a sort of goblin labyrinth of jagged edges. Ghosts of cars and tractors and trucks and trains.

Just beyond the edge of the yard, the pasture rose up into a steep hill as it began its long creep to the place where the forest started and continued all the way up to the crest of the mountain ridge.

John didn't know how Sherlock was coming along in his mental percolations, hours along by now. He'd last seen him sitting on the damp old couch on the porch, all wrapped up in his coat, chain-smoking and staring off into eternity, occasionally making a frustrated sound or a furious gesture that snapped off the inch of ash on his neglected cigarette and scattered it everywhere, half of it on him.

John finally decided to go out on onto the porch to check on him, on pretense of offering him some coffee. Not wanting to startle Sherlock or interrupt anything important, he nudged the old door open gently, toning down its familiar squeak.

Sherlock wasn't there anymore.

John bristled. Something wasn't feeling right. He looked out across the yard, hoping for a glimpse, but the fog was too dense. Hadn't he thought it was thinning? He'd been wrong about that, it was settling in again for another long murky night. Rain clouds could hang around the top of the hills for days on end, he knew it. Should be used to it.

But something made him creep back quickly into the house until he found his old Army pistol right where he'd left it on the coffee table when he'd been cleaning it after having it pilfered again. (Sherlock's aim was getting better. John would have to stay in practice if he wanted to make sure his huge margin of superiority stayed where it belonged. Why did Sherlock keep stealing _his_ gun? He had plenty of his own. A question for another time.) Something - be it too many horror movies or jungle-toned instinct - made him reluctant to shout out for Sherlock in that gathering gloom.

He walked up across the driveway, and up towards the pasture, carefully, sticking close to brush when he could. He leaned down and slowly threaded himself between the bars of the old wooden fence, and again through the second layer of barbed-wire strands. Arthur was nowhere to be seen, probably waiting out the chill and the damp in his barn.

For a moment, a wind did brush the fog past, and John saw Sherlock, standing tall and frozen in his long coat in the pasture, staring at the first rise of ridge. Sherlock didn't move.

Something on the edge of the field did move. As John watched, creeping closer to Sherlock all the time, he thought he saw the dim shapes of a man and a dog. John's instincts snapped into patroller's keenness, and then he took in every detail. Dog looked like a Shepherd mix but stockier, big but not huge; man taller than himself but shorter than Sherlock, broader. A dim flash of light made the short hair look reddish. Uniform. Navy. Ragged. Long thing in his hand, that's a gun.

And it was pointed for just a moment at Sherlock.

John's blood ran cold and his instincts sharpened. He shouted, and then he watched that rifle bole turn towards him. Saw a face clench in hate, saw the figure take aim.

John was there just as quick, had his gun up and was firing again and again until the man staggered and fell.

Then something big and heavy crashed into John, and he fell too.

The large and heavy thing was Sherlock, who'd sprung into action, shouting, “JOHN! JOHN! GET DOWN!” and moved like a lightning bolt to force him to do just that, slamming John to the ground with the force of his body and rolling them both under a laurel bush.

Sherlock moved away a little, getting most of his weight off at least, but the expression on his face when he stared down at John was terrifying. To see that controlled, confident face so unhinged with fear . . . John couldn't make sense of it. It didn't fit the facts. “Sherlock,” he finally said quietly, lifting up his hands to lightly grasp Sherlock's arms, “he missed. I'm fine.”

Sherlock was still trembling like a leaf, and finally he sat up on his knees and gazed away across the field. John scrambled up to a sitting position and finally said, quietly, reaching out for Sherlock's hand, “I think I hit him, though. We should go look. I don't know if I – I mean,” John said, flailing. “I thought he was aiming for you at first. Then he turned, and he was . . . “

“Yes, yes, self-defense,” Sherlock said impatiently. “Your aim is very good, even under these conditions. If he was truly out to kill one of us, you'd kill him first. Of that I have no doubt.”

“So we should go look,” John repeated. “Can you still see that dog?”

Sherlock squinted into the fog. “Yes. But we shouldn't go look.” He looked horrified at the very notion of investigating.

“Okay,” John said. “I need to know what's goin' on with you. We've been in dangerous situations before. We've had plenty of times we didn't know what was goin' on – don't lie, you know even you have. We've been shot at before and done our share of shootin'-at before. This is different. You _never_ refuse to go look. I need to know what you saw.”

“No, John!” Sherlock snapped. “I know what I think I saw. I need to know what _you_ saw.”

“I asked you first!”

“I asked you smarter!”

John just had to sit back and laugh for a moment, because Sherlock was acting like such a child. But the laughter didn't last long, because Sherlock was acting like a _scared_ child. That was worrying. So John just closed his eyes and did his best to describe the man and the dog, calmly and carefully. A broad-shouldered, athletic-looking man, reddish hair, military bearing that would have been obvious even if not for the uniform (that was in terrible shape, stained and torn, faded, missing buttons and a sleeve). A brown dog with white markings, seeming almost to grow in size as it snarled and growled in the fog, standing over its fallen master.

Sherlock closed his eyes and nodded, still white as a sheet. “Yes. You missed everything important, of course. But at least I know that you and I saw the same thing.”

“Sherlock, you look like you seen a ghost. If you don't wanna go up there and look, then let's go back to the house. All right?”

Sherlock grit his teeth, looking like he was having a struggle with himself, and John couldn't help but feel sorry for him – and still be scared as hell, because he didn't like seeing Sherlock like this, not one bit. Sherlock had been cool as a cucumber facing down a serial killer with his name at the top of her list, but he wasn't taking this well at all. Time to put a little Army on then. “Come on then,” he barked as authoritatively as he could, standing up carefully, taking Sherlock's hand and leading him back down the hill. Sherlock glanced behind him constantly, and John couldn't shake the impulse to tell him not to do that, like they were in the sort of creepy fairy tale where you shouldn't look back.

Once in the house, he got Sherlock settled on his most comfortable chair. It wasn't really cold in there, but John draped the afghan over his lap anyway, and he handed Sherlock a glass of the Lestrade family business. (With ice and a twist of lemon the way Sherlock liked it. Moonshine on the rocks - only Sherlock.)

“All right,” John said carefully as he built a small fire in the hearth. Sherlock was acting chilled to the bone despite the season, and that was more than enough to justify it. “Are you going to talk to me now? What did you see that upset you so much?”

Sherlock took a deep, atypical drink. “I recognized the dog first. The dog that took a bite of my ankle eight years ago.”

“What?” John said, leaning forward.

“Yes. Bull terrier-shepherd mix, very distinctive markings. The one on the hill looked larger, but that was an optical illusion.”

“Wait – that same dog? I thought you weren't living here then?”

“I wasn't,” Sherlock said, closing his eyes for a moment as if the stupidity of the world had overcome him. “I was in Charlottesville. Graduate studies in chemistry, University of Virginia. The dog belonged to a fellow student who wasn't supposed to have it, but a friend off-campus kept it for him. Surly thing, the dog. Victor Trevor was his name. Not the dog, his owner. Navy family, a ROTC midshipman. I wasn't the sort to make a lot of friends and he was hardly the type I would have expected to befriend, but for some reason he and I hit it off. He was a loner too in his way, and I soon learned he had secrets. Brought me home with him once, to Norfolk. His officer father didn't really take to me, probably because I was able to easily deduce that something dishonorable-discharge-worthy had happened during the Korean War, on a carrier called the _Gloria Scott._ I had a big mouth in those days.”

“Unlike now,” John said, with a tight little laugh.

“Victor is the man we saw. The one who started to shoot at you. The one you shot. Except that isn't possible.”

John sat back, horrified. “But . . . if he came all the way back here, tracked you down, then . . .”

“It's not possible, John. I've never received confirmation, but I'm all but certain he died in Vietnam. He was a river patrol pilot on the Mekong, and the casualty rate was high.” He drank deep again and stared wildly at the wall, face twisting. “You know that I'm at ease with the strange and unexpected. I love the _apparently_ inexplicable. But this time – this time . . . I'm finding it difficult to eliminate the impossible.”

“It's really got you rattled. You're freakin' out about this.”

“There's nothing wrong with me,” Sherlock lied emphatically. He leaned back, pressed the cold glass against his hollow cheek. He'd gone from shivering to sweating, and the melting ice cubes in his glass clinked as his hand shook.

“Tell me more about Victor,” John said quickly, stepping out onto dangerous ground all at once and tapping his knee with the hand that deliberately wasn’t touching Sherlock. "What happened after you said that about his father?”

“He dropped me, apparently, at least to all appearances, but he still came around sometimes on the sly. We both knew he was leaving as soon as he graduated – he had a commission, and was gung-ho to go _serve his country.”_ Sherlock probably didn’t spare a moment’s thought for how that sardonic little sneer was going to look to John - and John couldn’t even bring himself to mind that much, not right now.

“Shortly before Victor shipped out to Vietnam, he came to visit me. He brought cocaine – we both enjoyed that – and whiskey. We talked late into the night. He was as honest with me as he'd ever been, which wasn't saying very much. He said he hoped I'd take up that research post I'd been scouted for. The Pentagon was very keen on promising chemistry students in those days. I could go straight through them with Mycroft's help for the security clearance, or perhaps DuPont would pay me very, very well.”

“Why?” John asked, dreading the answer.

“You know why,” Sherlock said evenly. “You have some of the symptoms.” There was something in his eyes that was as close as he'd ever get to pity.

John took a deep, sighing breath, clenching his hand. “Yeah. So then what happened – you and Victor?”

“We had sex, of course,” Sherlock said matter-of-factly. “I'd deduced long ago that he wanted me but wasn't willing to risk his career. That night, he was artificially brave: inhibitions lowered, the fear of death upon him, about to leave all that was familiar to him – he made his move and I accepted. We both knew there was a good chance we'd never see each other again, and I think that for both of us, that was not necessarily a bad thing. Especially for him. He was . . . very passionate in the moment, but secretly relieved when I kicked him out in the morning after only one cup of coffee.”

“Not even any toast?” John said, making a weak joke to deflect the sick and angry twist in his gut at the thought of another man having a passionate night with Sherlock. As a vague fact, of course John knew there'd been others. But he'd never heard a _name._ He'd never had a glimpse of a face, illusory as it must be.

“No,” Sherlock said sourly. “He was leaving me. No toast for him.”

Something about his tone when he said that rocked John's world, changed his understanding of Sherlock, and bruised his heart. Of course Sherlock would notice, but John was pretty sure it would be better to pretend to try to hide it. Go back to the solution of the puzzle, that's what Sherlock needs, he thought.

“So . . . I mean, I know it's impossible, but if you think there's any chance that what we saw _was_ really him . . . ?”

“There is none. There is a _slim_ chance that he is alive, and if he is he's almost certainly in DC or Norfolk, and if not there then possibly still in Vietnam, or recovering in one of the many bases elsewhere – Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, you know them all of course. The chance that he is walking around Arthel County with the dog that he gave away in 1967 is nil. Like I said. Eliminating the impossible.”

“I KNOW,” John almost yelled. “But if it was, just sayin', just for the sake of argument.”

“Then he came back from the dead on the other side of the world just to kill you because he thinks you're his rival for me - when he was too much of a coward to love me in life. That's not the Victor Trevor I knew. He was conventional and craven and status-conscious, but never malicious. And at the very least, he knew that I abhor possessiveness.” Sherlock looked straight into John's eyes as he said this, and John knew a warning when he heard one.

“How do you feel about protectiveness?” John finally asked, chin raised high. He wasn't going to give _that_ up.

“I find I can't object to it without hypocrisy, because I'm prone to it myself where you're concerned.”

John nodded, leaned in a little closer to Sherlock. “So . . . after he left. That chemistry post, you didn't take it. What did you do?”

“I left UVA a week later. I finished my course requirements in advance and requested to have my degree sent to me by mail, care of my brother. I sold or gave away my more cumbersome possessions and took a train to New York. I lived there for a year and seven months, learning everything I could as an observer of human behavior. There is no better crash course in _that_ study in the whole country. Things got a little . . . unsafe . . . for me there, and Mycroft recalled me to Washington where he could keep an eye on me. Of course, that city doesn't completely lack for opportunities either.”

“And . . . so you mean you met other men?” John asked, like picking at a scab.

“Yes, lots of them. But none that I cared to get to know. Sex was a physiological function that I was curious to learn more about. To study and to master. More than once it's proved very useful.” Sherlock shivered hard, and refilled his glass with a hand that was still shaking. John watched in a little horror as he chugged it down. Sherlock _never_ drank like that. “I don't like – the chemical reactions of emotional attachment. The defect of love, the _entanglement._ It leads to so many errors, so much violence, morasses of muddled motives . . . “ Was he beginning to lisp and slur? Were his teeth chattering slightly? If John didn't know better, he'd think Sherlock might be falling ill. Maybe he was.

Maybe everything he was saying was true; Sherlock recoiled from love like it had bit him, like Victor's dog. Maybe he was just freaked out, and starting to get drunk. Or maybe he really felt contempt for all the naked emotions he could read like a tickertape across John's face.

Sherlock tried to rise, and swayed a little, grasping at the chair to steady himself as his knees gave way.

“Sherlock,” John said, calling up the doctor within. “When was the last time you ate? When was the last time you slept?”

“Don't . . . remember,” Sherlock said weakly.

“Alright then,” John said firmly, standing up. “You're goin' to bed. Now. If there's a dead body in our field, it can wait til you've had some rest. And if there isn't, then one ain't gonna just show up. Come on now.” He clamped an iron arm around Sherlock's waist to guide him up the stairs, and didn't even pretend to humor Sherlock's attempt to shove him away. With gritted teeth, John maneuvered six feet of sagging muscles and flailing limbs up the narrow old wooden staircase. With the last of his strength, he hoisted Sherlock up a little and tossed him onto the bed, wrenching the blankets out from under him and covering him up half-assedly, only sitting down on the bed to wrestle off Sherlock's shoes. He could keep the rest of it on, John thought, twisting away as Sherlock's manner changed to a sort of sloppy lust as he tried to drag John down on top of him.

“Oh hell no,” John said. “Not right now.”

“What's the point of you, then?” Sherlock sneered groggily.

“I might've just shot a ghost for you,” John said, shaking his head. “Any o' your other lovers ever take care of you like that?”

Sherlock lifted his head for a moment and gave John a horrible look of drunken, unfocused malice. “I don't have _lovers,_ John.”

There it was. The gut-punch. John just froze for a moment, paralyzed. “Shit. Wonder why.” _What am I to you then? Your bodyguard? Your handyman? Your babysitter? You're a cold son of a bitch._ He couldn't blurt any of that out, all he could do was stare and blink as the impact sank in, and then look away.

John made sure Sherlock's head was pillowed enough that he wouldn't choke on vomit if it came to that, and stormed out of the room, ignoring Sherlock's reaching hand trying to wordlessly call him back.

 

***

Once out of the bedroom and halfway down the stairs, John sank down to the landing and sat there, just to think. The images and events of the evening raced through his head – all blurry, all shrouded in gray uncertainty like the landscape outside.

He thought for a while of Remy Crable, taking the most final way out, alone in his jail cell, unable to live with what he'd seen and done.

John thought he should never have put his heart out in the first place. He hadn't even meant to, their first courtship had been such a whirlwind of murder-solving and mutual lust, and of course at the time it seemed to make sense to move in. Winter was coming. Sherlock had a warm house. A warm fire. A warm bed. 

John had thought, no, he's not what they say, Sherlock's a human being, a man, a great heart in there somewhere. For months he'd treasured that; they'd been so good living together, and Sherlock had told John time and time again how much he helped with his work. Hell, the sex was so good – it felt so intense to John, he'd assumed that Sherlock had to be feeling something like it too. _You know what happens when you assume._

John was _sure_ that he'd read in Sherlock's face and body, in certain unguarded moments, a likeliness that the two of them were settling in for a weird long haul, maybe even the rest of their lives (which might not be all that long considering their adrenalin-junkie lifestyle).  
Should have known better. Not only were he and Sherlock never on the same page, they weren't even reading the same book. John was reading a gay pulp romance novel and Sherlock was reading a giant, dry crime dossier where people's feelings only ever came into the picture as a motive for doing bad shit.

John thought of what he might have to do – reclaim all his possessions he'd brought up the hill into this house, pack up his little duffle bag, move back down into that sad-sack trailer he hadn't kept up much, and steel himself to pretend that Sherlock was nothing more than his neighbor.

Yeah. Stick around til the morning, make sure Sherlock was okay, and then hold his spine straight and his head high and just say it, because it wasn't any damn good to moon after a man who'd just never feel the same way, who probably couldn't and wouldn't ever even miss it in his life. He'd leave Sherlock in the morning. Not in the middle of the night like a coward with a note – John would just tell Sherlock to his face, and tell him why too, and then he'd just do it. (It'd be hard to make a clean break at less than half a mile away. He'd try, though.)

John had thought he'd never be able to sleep even on the couch, not with that thick disgusting knot of anger and grief threaded through his whole body. But to his surprise, he woke with the sky much lighter, and his head pressed against the wall of the staircase. It was a wonder he hadn't fallen down the stairs in the night.

***

John bolted to the window and looked down at the long black car creeping slowly up the driveway. He watched as the car stopped – his glance went to his gun on the kitchen counter (terrible place to leave it, he was definitely slipping). Were they going to hallo the house, whoever it was?

He heard a car horn honk and found it vaguely reassuring. Someone fancy who wouldn't lower themselves to yell, but still wanted to announce their presence and indicate they came in peace. So John was far less surprised than he might have been when the person who stepped out of the car's back seat was Mycroft Holmes.

Sherlock hadn't woken, and John wasn't about to do it. He padded carefully down the stairs and out the door to meet Mycroft himself. His mind was racing with babbling excuses about what he might be doing coming out of Sherlock's house like he lived there – which he did – but as he reached the porch and looked up at Mycroft's face, a sense of calm came over him, and the night’s heartache and escape plan began to melt away in John’s mind. Mycroft was even better at this deduction thing than Sherlock, was he? Well, let him deduce John’s place here. John wasn't ashamed and he wasn't afraid, and Sherlock deserved a man who'd stand up for him and hold his head up high (even if it was only about five foot six high).

John smiled warily as Mycroft approached stepped up on the porch. “Come on in, Mycroft, I'll put some coffee on,” he said.

“Dr. Watson -” Mycroft said.

“Call me John, please,” John said, putting a little military weight on the last word.

Mycroft followed him into the house, and as John set the coffee to brew, he watched Mycroft's eyes darting around the house and registering everything. He had eloquent eyebrow arches of disdain, sure, as expected; he was initially hesitant to sit because of course the furniture all looked inhospitable to prissy upper-class fussbudgets. (Was that part of Sherlock's design? Of course it was.) But John understood that Mycroft was also more than he seemed.

John brought the coffee out. “You've come to see Sherlock. All the way from DC?”

“I was at the Greenbrier when I received news that I knew would interest him. It wasn't a very long trip.”

John nodded, took a sip. “He's sleepin.' It's been a really long case and he really needs it. I don't wanna wake him up just yet.”

Mycroft nodded patronizingly and looked around at the living room, for a while, and then fixed his eyes on John as he sipped his coffee with a little sneer. “You've certainly made yourself at home in this house. You've become very loyal to Sherlock very quickly.”

“I don't see how that's any of your business,” John said, pleasantly.

“On the contrary, it is. I worry about him constantly. It would be so nice if I could have a reliable reporter to help me keep tabs on my errant brother. I'd make it worth your while.”

John sat back, crossing his legs at the knee. “Are you offering to pay me to spy on your own brother? The answer's no. I know up there in Washington, spying is just like sayin' hi, but down here, people value mindin' your own business. At least in theory. We're shit at it, but at least we hold it up as an ideal.”

Mycroft smiled at this, wrinkled his nose at another sip of coffee, and relaxed his shoulders a little. “Captain Watson. If I wanted, I could apply pressure. You understand why I wonder about you, don't you? Your file tells me that you're very fond of women; you've proven that on three continents. And yet now you share my brother's bed. Of course I must wonder why, and you should understand my concern.”

John sipped his own cup. It was awful. Cheap shit, hurriedly made, and God only knew what Sherlock used the coffeemaker for when John wasn't looking. But it was caffeine and it felt good. “I don't even want to know how you know that.”

Mycroft leaned forward a little. “You defied the impulse to deny it. Interesting.”

“Why waste both our time?” John said, holding that cold searching gaze. “Is this the part where you tell me if I break his heart, even bloodhounds and psychics won't find my body?”

Mycroft sighed, exasperated, and resembled Sherlock much more than usual for one split second. “I'm not worried about _your_ honor. Honestly, I'd do better to warn you to guard yourself - if you find yourself getting _involved.”_

“I appreciate that, I really do, but I'm sure you know I already am. Why are you here _now?”_

Mycroft narrowed his calculating eyes, and then opened them again. “As I said, I've received a news item that . . . I think Sherlock should know about. And I was concerned, if there was a chance he'd be alone when he received it. I don't think that would be good.” He handed John a sealed envelope. “I am glad that he's not alone.”

John cocked his head and was about to press Mycroft further on it, or even open it himself, when he heard a shout from upstairs, and leapt to his feet, instantly attuned to it. _Sherlock. Awake. In distress._

But rather than running, John held still for a moment and watched as Sherlock appeared at the top of the stairs. Sherlock's face went through a rapid-fire change of emotions as he saw John there alive and safe, and then saw Mycroft. And in a flash, John thought he understood just why Sherlock had panicked to wake up and find John out of his sight.

Sherlock came down the stairs cautiously – wrapped in a bedsheet, and to all appearances wearing nothing else. With each step he regained another grain of lost dignity, until he came down the last leg of stairs like a queen in a trailing gown.

John saw the quick side-eye glance that reassured Sherlock, when those silvery eyes flickered over John, frantically at first and then settling into calm. Something had really worried him for a moment there, but he seemed alright now. He didn't even mind when Sherlock turned all his attention on his brother.

“Mycroft,” Sherlock said. “There are only a very few reasons why you would be here. I'd hazard a guess, but I don't have to. You have an envelope. I know what's in it.”

“I gave the envelope to John,” Mycroft said.

John held it up, showing Sherlock that it was true.

“Get out of here, Mycroft,” Sherlock said.

Mycroft stood up slowly to his full height – slightly taller than Sherlock. “I'm leaving now. I have important business awaiting me.”

“I'm sure you do, _brother mine,”_ Sherlock said contemptuously.

John rose to escort Mycroft out the door, as you do when the owner of the house has ordered someone out. He still had the envelope in one hand, and it was all but glowing with terrible import. The stress, the heartbreak, the fear, or maybe just pure simple instinct acted on John, provoked him wildly – to the point where he could quickly grab Mycroft's sleeve and whisper from between gritted teeth, “Do you love him?”

This clearly broke through so many layers of propriety at once that Mycroft seemed suddenly at sea for one brief, shining moment – but only a little, he was so quick – and his expression grew sharp again, studying John like a lab animal that had just done something completely unexpected. And to John's surprise, he quickly said, “Of course I do.”

“Good,” John said. “He says you're even better at deducing people than he is. Look at me. See what you see.”

“Oh, Captain Watson,” Mycroft said with an unreadable expression. “You could be the making of my brother. Or you could make him even worse than ever. “

“I'll keep that in mind,” John said. “But that's up to us, not you.” But as he relaxed a little from all that broken tension, he found it in himself to softly say, “Thanks. I'll try to get him to write once in a while at least.”

***

When John came back in, he found Sherlock on the couch in his sheet, shivering slightly.

“Form letter, most likely. A copy. Victor was a Second Lieutenant, I believe. His father was Navy and mother long dead, so it wouldn’t exactly be the standard ‘Dear Mr. and Mrs. Trevor’ boilerplate, though that would be the gist of it. Mycroft being Mycroft, I’m sure he has access to all the heinous details that are known. At this late date, I believe the likeliest possibility is that his remains were identified in a POW camp. Something along those lines is what the envelope contains. I’m sure of it. It’s the only thing Mycroft would take upon himself to deliver in person - yet without telling me verbally, which is what he’d be more likely to do if it was bad news about our own family.”

John made as if to open it, then he thought better of it and handed it to Sherlock. Sherlock tossed it onto the coffee table, unopened, and sat there staring into space, trembling.

Then he did another terrifying thing. He fell to his knees in front of John and looked like he was about to cry, and all John could do was stare, because this couldn't be, shouldn't be happening. Lord knows John was fine with Sherlock getting on his knees for another purpose, but not like this. John had thought plenty of times he might like to see Sherlock with his arrogance cracked, just a little. But he wasn't enjoying this _at all._

“God, Sherlock,” he said, hoarse with fear. “Stand up, please.”

Sherlock tried to do so, hands on the wall pulling himself up. His eyes never left John's as he said, croaking slowly, “I don't have lovers, John. I've only ever had _one.”_

“Fuck. Sherlock,” John said, reaching out a hand.

“Forgive me.”

“Course I do, _God.”_

Sherlock was struggling to compose himself, and mostly succeeded, but there was something in there that still looked a little lost and afraid.

“Sherlock – was he your first?”

Sherlock nodded.

 _I want to be your last,_ John thought, but that was too much of his heart to bare at the moment - and he was afraid it might sound like a threat, in light of recent events. All he said was, “I'm so sorry.” And he truly was.

“I accepted it long ago,” Sherlock said. “Which is why I wasn’t expecting to glimpse that face yesterday.”

John reached out his hand, and Sherlock took it, and the pressure of Sherlock's sudden relaxation almost brought them both down to the floor when John took Sherlock in his arms and held him close, nuzzling a little at his shoulder, feeling the warm strength all along his front and reveling in it. “Come back to bed, Sherlock.”

“Not sleepy anymore,” Sherlock said softly.

“Good,” John said, lightly kissing Sherlock’s throat. “Neither am I.”

Sherlock chuckled, dark and deep, and pressed kisses to the side of John's neck, and John's hands tightened in the sheet hanging down Sherlock's back. Quickly they disengaged to go up the stairs, and Sherlock still had a little wobble to his walk and John guided him to make sure he didn't trip on his sheet. Sherlock kept some of that unhinged, wild quality, but he was laughing now, much more at ease. Even enough to goad John a little when they got to their bedroom.

“Victor did look good in his uniform,” Sherlock muttered.

“Yeah? All the nice girls love a sailor?”

Sherlock was almost giggling as he turned around and let John push him down on the bed. “I'm not a nice girl,” he said.

“Nope, you're neither. Guess you'll have to settle for a soldier, then.”

“I never _settle_ for anything, John,” Sherlock said as he took John's face in his big, warm hands and pulled him in for a long, wet, increasingly ravenous kiss.

John managed to pull himself back enough to ask, “You aren't too hungover?”

“No,” Sherlock said, smiling. “I didn't really drink that much.”

John let himself remember: no, Sherlock really hadn't. “You were faking it.”

“Not entirely. I exaggerated. I was attempting to cover my embarrassing excess of emotion.”

John's smile colonized his face like kudzu. “Yeah, you failed at that for sure. Alright then. Lie back. I'm gonna treat you right.”

Sherlock gave a pleased little purr as John nuzzled his neck, biting softly, unwrapping Sherlock's sheet like a Christmas present and running his hands over every inch he could reach of pale, shivering skin. “Cold?” John asked softly.

“Heat me up,” Sherlock said, hand cupping John's head and guiding him where he wanted John's mouth – his own mouth, his neck, his shoulders, his chest – before dropping his hands to pluck at John's shirt buttons and his belt buckle, getting John stripped enough to travel his skin with eager thoroughness. 

As John wriggled out of his jeans, trying to get naked without leaving Sherlock's embrace, Sherlock hindered more than helped by wrapping long legs around him, pressing his flushed erection against John's belly again and again. His movements and gropings were demanding and imperious in that way he got when he wanted to get fucked hard enough to make a different kind of electrical storm in his brain, to drown out all the other threads of thoughts that overwhelmed him.

Finally getting out of all his clothes, John wrestled with Sherlock a little playfully, trying to pin him down and get his bent bony knees out of the way, open up his thighs and lick and sniff at his cock, all but jumping up into John's mouth. “John -” Sherlock gasped as John took just the head in, sucking slowly and gently and giving the hot soft tip slow pulses of his tongue. He knew Sherlock loved that, oh, he'd squirm and struggle and push John's head down on him and try to get more pressure, more friction, but that was just for show, really – Sherlock sometimes just _loved_ to be teased.

It meant John would go slow with him, take his time, _learn_ him. John didn't kid himself for one second that his own attention was ever as keen as Sherlock's, even on the most important things – but he loved to sink into a head-zone where all he knew was Sherlock's body, his responses, his needs, his cravings; Sherlock would always rise up to meet him, giving him the breaths and cries and undulations that let John know he was doing a good job. The slick texture of the velvety skin of Sherlock's cock, sliding hot and thick against the inside of John’s mouth, that was his whole world for long, long minutes. 

John held his hands firm around the handles of Sherlock's hipbones, holding him still and then letting him move, just a little. From time to time John opened his watering eyes to watch Sherlock's upper body thrash a little against the mattress, one long arm flung up over his head and the other resting on John’s head, trying not to push him down too roughly.

“John,” Sherlock said, his voice cracked and ragged. “I want you inside me. Take me hard this time. I don't want to come until you're fucking me. You won't even have to touch me then, I want it so much.”

“Fuck, Sherlock,” John muttered, panting, lightly still stroking Sherlock's wet cock and rubbing his stubbly face over the taut, downy-haired planes of Sherlock's belly. All twitching, flexing muscle here, not even a tiny hint of padding to nip, but John still managed a little scrape of teeth that made Sherlock jump as if tickled. “Fuck yeah.” He ran a hand up the back of Sherlock's right thigh, giving his ass cheek a long, deep squeeze.

Sherlock nudged him and pressed a can at him, and John couldn't help but chuckle and wince. “Lard, Sherlock? Really?”

“I like the texture,” Sherlock said with a lazy smile, running his fingers over his own nipples in that way that made John want to fall upon him and devour him. “You didn't mind when I used bacon grease the last time I had my way with you in the kitchen.”

“That's what that was?” John said, giggling. “You're a fuckin' filthy redneck whether you admit it or not.” What the hell, when it came to sex, there was pretty much nothing John wouldn't try when he had a horny, desperate, wicked, playful Sherlock goading him into it. This was small potatoes. (Well, maybe not potatoes. Yeah. He'd draw the line at potatoes.) John obediently ran his fingers through the grease and his tongue over Sherlock's nipple, tasting his skin and flicking at the hard point of it while he worked his hand in between Sherlock's beautiful, firm round ass-cheeks, seeking out the sensitive entrance to his body. He was never going to get over the way it twitched beneath his touch and seemed to draw his fingers in once it got used to the idea of him.

Sherlock moaned and John bit down a little, then licked apologetically as he pushed two fingertips in. “Gonna make you _squeeeeaal like a pig,”_ he giggled into the light spray of hair on Sherlock's chest.

“I don't _squeal,_ John,” Sherlock said in a low, vibrating voice that John could feel against his lips.

John slapped Sherlock's ass hard, and Sherlock squealed. “You sure as hell do,” John chuckled. That seemed to renew Sherlock's sense of purpose, and he squirmed violently, toppling John off him and rolling onto his belly, dropping one long leg off the edge of the bed and presenting his glorious ass in the lewdest possible way. _Fuck,_ John thought, and crawled back over him as he circled his greased finger around on Sherlock's hole, burying his nose in Sherlock's hair. _Getting shaggy. Like a rock star. Kind of like that guy in Led Zeppelin._ John was grabbed by the mental image of Sherlock in a tight jumpsuit with a big Chinese dragon down the side, and giggled a little even as his cock twitched, getting harder at the ridiculous, as it so often did around Sherlock. _Maybe I'll get lucky and he'll have to wear something like that for a case._

“Stop laughing and start fucking,” Sherlock demanded.

“I think I'm the one on top this time, princess,” John growled, biting the nape of Sherlock's neck and working his way slowly down Sherlock's back, pausing at every mole and freckle. He was going to get into that ass, sure as hell, but not before he got to bite it a little. He let Sherlock moan and writhe in delirious frustration as John teased him with his hands and his mouth – squeezing, parting, biting, sucking, poking at him with little stabs of his tongue, not even minding the mild taste of lard. _Gonna get hard every time anyone tries to bake a pie,_ John thought. _Like the Crisco didn't already do that._

“John,” Sherlock wailed, giving it multiple syllables and turning it into a plea. “Haven't you teased me long enough? I need you, John. I _need_ you.”

John sat up on his knees for a moment and greased up his cock, savoring the sweet tug and creamy slide of it. Sherlock arched himself up and spread his thighs, groaning with relief as John mounted him and pushed against him; they both cried out as John's cock slid home into that tight sweet pathway he knew so well, feeling so welcomed there he couldn’t help but give a little gasp of joy.

 _He never needs much prep, he knows how to do it, God, he's always so ready,_ John thought, and maybe that wasn't a good thought, because it served to remind him that Sherlock had had a hell of a lot of practice before they even met, and that meant other men being intimate with him, enjoying him, getting off on him and in him . . . 

_And none of those other men are balls-deep in him right now, are they, you idiot?_ John told himself as he began to move and Sherlock squirmed and clenched around him, panting and trying to hump the mattress even as John took control of the pace. John grasped Sherlock's wrists and pinned them to the bed as he rocked in and out, going as far as he could either way, giving a little snap to his hips here and there, pressing down to hear the hitch in Sherlock's heavy breathing, the quietly vocalized gasps as he thrust into him with an easy rhythm.

“Harder,” Sherlock pleaded. “Faster.”

_No._

John held Sherlock steady, and made all his strokes slow and long and deep, taking his time and letting the pleasure build gradually. He couldn't quite get to Sherlock's ear in this position but he leaned close and used his weight to hold Sherlock as still as he could possibly get. “I like to fuck you _so slow,_ Sherlock,” he whispered. “You feel so fucking good. I like to be in you for a _good long time,_ get it? This is where I wanna be. I ain't goin' _nowhere.”_

Sherlock seemed to go still for a moment, and Sherlock's face turned a little against the pillow, shaking and creasing a little, and John knew he’d understood. He kissed Sherlock's upper back and re-established that rolling, tidal rhythm he liked. Sherlock was shaking underneath him, his spine rippling just a little beneath John's weight, his hips struggling between meeting John's thrusts and rubbing his cock against the sheets. John took mercy and climbed up on his hands, freeing Sherlock to move a little, and was rewarded with filthy, shameless writhing. “So good, John, so good,” was all Sherlock could say because he was literally biting the pillow. “Fuck don't stop, let me come like this, please, just don't stop . . .”

“Never,” John promised, putting a little more force into it and trying not to lose it himself at Sherlock's breathy, broken cry and violent shuddering, and almost painful clenching around John's cock as climax took him and tossed him around into a sweating, twitching mess of a man. John lowered himself again and buried his face between Sherlock's shoulder blades, inhaling the heady scent of his musk and sweat, as he finally took his own pleasure with short, sharp little thrusts, groaning Sherlock's name as he shook and shot deep inside him.

Sherlock barely moved, just panted, as John rocked slowly through the aftershocks, in no hurry at all to pull out, letting himself go completely soft before finally withdrawing. He bent down and placed a kiss at the base of Sherlock's spine before crawling back enough to let Sherlock roll over.

God, the mess Sherlock had made, all over the sheets and his own belly. He sprawled out like a half-sleeping cat, grunting a little as John took a corner of the sheet to wipe drying come out of his pubic hair. “You'd been savin' that one up a while,” John said, smiling.

“It was _very_ good, John. Very intense.”

“Glad to hear that,” John said, crawling over Sherlock to kiss him face to face. He loved the way Sherlock's mouth tasted after sex – there was a lush, musky quality to it. He loved the way Sherlock felt lazy and pliant in his arms, allowed himself to be held and pampered a little, and still managed to make it seem as if he was doing _John_ a favor by it.

“You were planning to leave,” Sherlock said softly. It wasn't a question. “Earlier.”

“Thought I might have to,” John admitted. “I sure as hell didn't want to.”

“And . . . ?”

“I don't think I have to,” John whispered. “Do I?”

“Certainly not,” Sherlock said, brushing his lips over John's forehead.

“Good. Are you ever gonna tell me why you were so scared when you woke up? Was it just cause you thought I might be gone?”

“I thought you might be dead,” Sherlock said. “It was . . . just a nightmare, I'm sure.”

“No, it wasn't,” John said, creeping ever closer into Sherlock's embrace. “It's because there's no dead body in our field, is there? No dog either?”

Sherlock sighed. “No, John. There isn't.”

Well, if Sherlock was willing to let the mystery go for long enough to get some rest, John wasn't going to put up a fight, being ready for a good nap himself. He was definitely going to sleep better cuddling up to Sherlock than leaning on the stairwell wall.

 _Sherlock doesn’t know what really happened,_ he thought. Perhaps John should have been disillusioned, or even more worried than before, or desperate to get that enigma solved.

But when it came down to it, John wasn’t all that scared by haints, if that’s what it was - and unlike Sherlock, he’d be willing to accept that possibility. The thing he’d been most scared of this time, well, they’d already beat it for now, because Sherlock was lying asleep in John’s arms, right where he belonged, and John was going to stay there with him, where _he_ belonged. As long as that was true, John could face whatever else might come at him.

Sherlock had more sensitive standards for that sort of thing, John knew. The brain-storm would start up again soon enough. This moment of peace was important, haints be damned. _Suck it, haint. I’m alive and you’re not. I’ve got him and you don’t._

On that note of bravado, John drifted off easily although the day was dawning bright and clear.

 

***

“It's as I thought,” Sherlock said, lifting his head from his microscope and rolling his head to loosen the tension in his neck and shoulders. John stepped forward to give him a little massage, and Sherlock sighed and allowed it. Proof that he was at least temporarily satisfied, John thought. He wouldn't relax like that otherwise.  
“Remainders of carbonized _Psilocybe caerulipes_ in the wood and leaves that were being burned in that field. It's rare, but it does occur in this region. Not the same species of psychoactive mushroom most commonly used for recreational purposes, but it's a related strain.”

John gave this a second's thought and let it sink it. “Wait a minute. So . . . you really think that a man shot something that wasn't real, strangled himself with his bare hands, and three witnesses saw a murder that never really happened, because they were all having a bad trip?”

Sherlock sat back, and the look in his eyes was unfathomable. It was telling that he leaned his head back against John's chest, and let John's hands go still on his shoulders and just touch him.

“It's just a theory. Have you ever eaten psychedelic mushrooms, John?”

“Yeah, once. You?”

“Of course.”

So then they both sat back in a tense but companionable silence as John continued to work at a knot in Sherlock's right shoulder, suspecting they were both thinking exactly the same thing, which was _so we both know it doesn't feel like that at all._

“Varna, Remy, and the Earlys, mother and son, all knew Joe. They all knew the story. Guilty conscience? Power of suggestion?” Sherlock was talking to himself, and not exactly expecting an answer. “The big gaping hole in this theory is what happened to _us._ You never met Victor. Until yesterday, you never knew he existed. Yet your description of him was . . . not inaccurate. And I assure you, I do not have a guilty conscience. Nor should you.”

“I don't,” John said firmly, running a hand through Sherlock's hair. “Not because of this, anyway.”

Sherlock looked up at John, holding his gaze, until he was satisfied that it was true. It seemed to take him by surprise, though John thought he should know better by now. “Well, the cruel irony is that if Crable wasn’t dead, Lestrade would probably have to let him go. Who’d he kill? No one. There’s no physical evidence of a crime of any kind. Even if he believed he'd shot someone, suicide seems . . . premature. The witnesses’ accounts all suggest that he thought he was acting in self-defense or perhaps to protect Varna. Would guilt, or fear of the legal system have been enough reason to take his own life, when there was a solid chance of acquittal or a lenient sentence? Seems extreme.”

John was shaking his head. “I don’t know. Didn’t know the man. But you said strangling yourself like that is pretty much impossible.”

“It is,” Sherlock said. “But when we’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable - is still fucking impossible.”

“Damn, you don’t usually cuss like that. Out of bed, anyway,” John said, smiling nervously.

“I don’t like this,” Sherlock said, looking down at the table, trembling. “I don’t like not knowing. I don’t have the answer.”

***

“John, you know I don't see the point of getting personally involved,” Sherlock said, staring up at the little wood-frame church.

“We're not getting involved. We're just paying respects, that's all. You don't have to do a damn thing. You don't have to say anything. In fact – probably better if you don't.”

The church was small and plainly furnished, and there weren't many people there. Even so, Varna Vaughn was seated in the back, not up in the widow's traditional front-row seat. Well, she hadn't really been Remy's wife, and there were those in his family less than thrilled to see her. Especially now. She was dressed in black, but not the full widow's weeds. She wasn't wearing a ring – not anyone's ring. And she looked very alone – and surprised to see Sherlock and John. Suspicious and wary, not necessarily glad. John couldn't blame her – he knew he was terrible at this sort of thing and Sherlock was worse.

The choir was just getting rolling on “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” so thankfully there was no expectation of small talk.

John was about to flinch when Sherlock leaned down to talk to her, but what he said surprised him. “I apologize for my . . . lack of success on your case.”

She just nodded. “I don't blame you. Thanks, though.”

“My condolences, Varna,” John said. “War is hell.” He patted her shoulder awkwardly and let Sherlock lead him away.

 

Once out in the hearse – which for once, wasn't the only one in the parking lot – John laid his hand on Sherlock's knee as they started to drive away. “I can't believe you did that. Admit you don't really know what happened! It's still down on paper as a suicide, right?”

“Yes. But Varna is a religious believer who's likely to think her lover is damned to hell if he took his own life. I thought it would be kinder to let her continue to believe that there's a possibility that he didn't. Of course if he didn't, then he's a killer who was himself killed by a ghost, which probably doesn't help his case, and of course the adultery is undisputed fact, so - ”

“You. Thought it was kinder.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. “Do you think I was wrong?”

John gave that a serious moment’s thought. “No. I guess it was, wasn’t it?”

Sherlock smiled a little, just on one side of his face.

“It’s just something I’d never have thought you'd do,” John said. “Not in a million years.”

Sherlock grinned wholly at John for an instant and then turned sharply back towards the rolling road. “Well, I never would have thought you'd openly acknowledge the nature of our relationship to Mycroft of all people.”

“Oh God, did you hear us talkin'?”

“No, but Mycroft has his little tells that I could read. I know my own brother very well, better than he thinks. He was mortified of course – but not completely displeased.”

John smiled. He'd gotten that sense all right, but it was good to hear Sherlock confirm it. “So . . . we have his blessing?”

“I wouldn't go that far,” Sherlock said, laughing. “He probably thinks you might domesticate me a little, though.”

John just burst out laughing. “Now why the hell would I wanna do that?”

“I have no idea,” Sherlock said.

“So you’re really gonna let it go? You can’t actually believe --”

“Of course not.” Sherlock just chuckled and stared out the windshield straight ahead. “This world is enough for us, John. No ghosts need apply.”

John’s hand had found its way to its customary place on Sherlock’s knee. His blood flushed hot when Sherlock picked up his hand and began to absently suck on his index finger as if it was a cigarette.

“Someone might see,” he muttered, though he certainly didn’t really want it to stop.

“Unlikely,” Sherlock muttered, and John could feel the movements of his lips and tongue for just a moment until Sherlock took his hand away to talk. “And if so, would they truly know what they’re seeing? We know how deceptive the eye can be, after all.”

“Yeah, well, my cock knows what it’s feeling just fine, and I’m going to start interferin’ with your driving in a moment.”

“I can walk and chew gum at the same time, as you know --”

“NO.” John said firmly, snapping his hand back. “You’re getting us home first.”

“I know a good secluded graveyard.”

“I’m sure you know a million of ‘em. Home. Please.”

Sherlock pouted, and John thought for a moment of the best way to compromise. “OK, then, how about out in the field where that dead body wasn’t?”

“Acceptable,” Sherlock said with a grin.

John didn’t know much about ghosts - except he did know one very good method of loosening their hold on the living.


End file.
